Fans line the parade route in Lower Manhattan head of the ticker-tape parade to mark the Giants’ Super Bowl victory on Tuesday.

For the Giants, celebrating their second Super Bowl victory in four years means upholding a nearly century-old New York City tradition: a ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway.

The parade begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday near Battery Park and will continue north to City Hall, where the team will receive a ceremonial key to the city. At least 30 tons of confetti will rain down on the players and coaches from the skyscrapers lining Broadway.

Following the festivities in Lower Manhattan, the Giants will go back across the Hudson to MetLife Stadium for a 3 p.m. rally with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

“I remember [Giants owner] John Mara looking at me and saying, ‘You don’t want to miss this now,’” Coach Tom Coughlin said of the Giants’ last parade four years ago. “It’s the same thing I would convey to all of our players—you don’t want to miss this.”

A team of Wall Street Journal reporters will bring you dispatches from the scene as the celebration unfolds.

Fans lined up hours ahead of parade time, some bringing chairs and talking about where to stand to get the best view of their champions. Others preferred to relive Sunday’s last-minute victory over hashing out parade-viewing strategies.

One man walked down the steps to the Bowling Green subway station, dressed in Giants memorabilia and giving his friend a hard time that his memory of the Super Bowl would forever be overpowered by his game-time marriage proposal to his girlfriend. The friend with the engagement just smiled and disagreed.

Photo: Fans waited for the start of the Giants Super Bowl parade in lower Manhattan on Tuesday. (Credit: Associated Press)

Not everyone is in the mood to celebrate. Angry commuters shouted at police and waived their work IDs above their heads on their way to offices around the Financial District before the parade started, trying to get passed police barricades. Braving the crowds, commuters pushed against the metal police fences and slowly spilled out onto the street. But the scenes turned tense as police turned back fans hoping to get a better viewing spots.

All the parade pieces started falling into place at the southern end of the West Side Highway about an hour before the parade start time. The 10 press trucks are loaded — each one will lead a float of players — and I can see at least six marching bands from high schools in New York and New Jersey warming up. Expect a lot of “Eye of the Tiger” and, strangely, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

The parade will form up at about West Street and Battery Place before making the big left turn onto the Canyon of Heroes and crawling up to Worth Street. Lower Manhattan traffic, of course, was already mess long ago.

While some fans arrived before dawn, the people on the corner of Battery Place and Broadway slept in by comparison. Staten Island resident Mike Ronan grabbed a spot right up against the barricades just after 8 a.m., making him far from the early bird.

“I went to work four years ago, you can’t miss both of them,” said Ronan, 30 years old. “With our luck they won’t win for 40 years.”

“If (the players) told you they thought they were going to win they were lying,” he said. “In an hour they are going to ride by with a trophy. Does it really matter that we lost to Seattle or the Redskins? No.”

Fans are lining both sides of Broadway clad in red, white, blue and silver. Ahead of parade time the crowd was still somewhat mellow — with occasional screaming at the cars and taxis driving by. Sporadic jeers about the Jets can also be heard, particularly chants of “Sanchez sucks,” referring to the other New York team’s quarterback.

In more bad news for late-starting commuters, police have taped off the City Hall subway station. Workers struggled to get through the hordes of fans and asking police for directions.

One dad, 48-year-old Eddie Gonzalez, a construction worker from Coney Island, arrived at City Hall by 7 a.m. He held his 4-year-old son Jeremy Lorenzo and led a chant of “This town belongs to the Giants!” The family, along with 13-year-old daughter Esmerelda, is playing hooky for the parade.

“He’s our good luck charm,” Gonzalez said of his young son. “He was born in December 2007 and we went straight to the playoffs. He just made his birthday Dec. 1, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt, the football gods would bless us with another Super Bowl.”

Gonzalez added: “All praise goes to Coach Coughlin. He has my vote for president.” He then shouted: “Let’s go Giants!”

Near the corner of Broadway and Warren, the crowd is lobbing toilet paper rolls back and forth across the Canyon of Heroes. After the first lob across the street, a group of guys yelled “And its GOOD!”

Photo: An aerial view of fans along the parade route. (Credit: Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal)

Members of Ironworkers Local 40, banging mallets on a steel building frame, are leading cheers from the upper stories of the Fulton Street Transit Center, which is under construction at Broadway and Fulton. Many are wearing blue jerseys under their hard hats and yellow vests.

One of the men, secured by a harness, climbed out onto a ledge to wave a wooden sign spray painted in orange letters: “Boston Sux.” After a round of anti-Boston chants, the fans lining the sidewalk across the street began chanting: “Iron workers!”

Just as the parade started rolling, revelers started a chant of “Giants.” A restless crowd wondered where there team was, angling to get a good look at the street. NYPD motorcycles began to zoom down Battery Street at 11:05 a.m. as fans began to ask the question out loud.

“Where are they?” wondered Tom Fosorile, 65, a life-long Giants fan from Massapequa, N.Y. ”I just want to be here,” he said. “I want to see the players I want to see Coughlin, I want to see all of it. I just want to be part of it — I’m a New Yorker, my team.”

The first float out is the wide receivers, which makes sense: these Giants changed their offense to be more pass heavy this season. Hakeem Nicks looks sharp in white, Victor Cruz is in the red hoodie and the man in gray is Mario Manningham, the forgotten receiver much of the year who ended up making the money, money 38-yard fourth-quarter catch. Before the game, Eli Manning said he told Manningham he expected the fourth-year receiver would have a big game — just because of what the Patriots would do to Nicks and Cruz — and he was right.

Manningham is in the last year of his contract and this may be one of his last days as a Giant. He believes he can be a top receiver, and I don’t think he’s happy in his role here with the Giants. Also: the Giants know they’ll need to pay Nicks in a year and Cruz in a couple more, so their offer to Manningham may not match other those of teams.

Wave harder when you see Manningham go past — this may be good-bye too.

Eli Manning and Justin Tuck just set off, and now the noise is really starting. Manning, just back from Disney World, is waving the Lombardi Trophy around and the confetti has already blanketed the sidewalk at the corner of West and Battery.

Photo: A fan throws confetti out the window during the victory parade. (Credit: Reuters)

Red double decker buses used by New York City tourists just drove by in between the floats. As one rounded the corner, the crowd began to shout “Who are you?” Alas, none of the bus passengers were Giants players.

As the first wave of the parade rounded the corner at Battery Place and Broadway, fans began to cheer. One fan from the back of the crowd screamed out “Where is Gisele?”

About a minute passed between the launch of each float holding different groups of players. Fans shouted the names of their favorite players as they passed by. The players appeared just as excited as the fans, taking their own photos of the crowd.

Angel Lugo, 29, linked arms with other fans to conceal another fan who needed a covert and impromptu bathroom break amid the parade action — without stepping away the celebration.

“He’s just a guy we met on the subway,” said Lugo of the fellow repurposing a Gatorade bottle. “You know how New Yorkers are. We make friends in a second.”

Lugo came from Connecticut with three friends. “This is the best experience I’ve ever had. We went to the Hotel Pennsylvania, went to the Knicks game last night,” he said. “It was a last-minute thing, it was all spur of the moment beacsue we were just so psyched to see our team. This is my first victory parade.”

Lugo said he works as a postman and served in the Marines for three years, including a tour in Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. ”The Giants have been my team my whole life. I was born a Giants fan,” he said. “Even though I live in Connecticut, I’m still a New Yorker at heart.”

The rapper Flava Flav, wearing a Manning jersey and his trademark clock necklace, just passed by on the Timex float. He was pumping his arms and riling the crowd up as Brandon Jacobs and other team members waved from the front of the float.

And here come the Maras, Coach Coughlin, general manager Jerry Reese, Mayor Bloomberg and captains Eli Manning and Justin Tuck. (Want to be that Manning and Tuck are wishing they weren’t stuck with the grownups?)

Tuck and Manning have grown very close in being leaders of this team, one that was 7-7 and had lost five of 6. In the aftermath of the Super Bowl win, Manning was single-minded in trying to find Tuck and hug him first — before he could put on a Super Bowl champion hat or hug anyone else.

Tuck told me that night that they said, “I love you” to each other — and that that was the story of this team. The camaraderie, the genuine affection and the real friendships were unusual, and everyone from Giants co-owner and team president John Mara to coach Tom Coughlin said that.

The crowd reached an all-time high volume as Manning, Coughlin, Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo drove by. They began to chant “MVP” — and probably not for the politicians.

“It’s exciting and you don’t know when its going to happen again,” said Sabrina Rosal, 26, from Kearny, N.J.

As the Vince Lombardi trophy went up Broadway and the special teams float passed by, Rosal thought about if she would brave the crowds and do it all again. ”For the Giants yes, for baseball no,” she concluded.

It’s not just sanctioned confetti that falls during the parade. Office workers tossed full sheets of paper along with shredded stuff from buildings on Broadway. Some of them, leaning out of eight and 10-story windows, are wearing Giants jerseys in the office today.

Willy Yanda, 49, arrived at 7:30 a.m. with his Staten Island neighbor to see the parade. ”I never watched football until three years ago, when I couldn’t walk,” he said. “I had to get a double hip replacement. Recuperating at the hospital and at home, I started watching football. I watched all football games, but I became a Giants fan. So this is my first parade.”

“When the Giants won we lit off fireworks right on the corner in my neighborhood,” he added.

The 14-year veteran of the MTA wanted to bring the airhorn he uses to warn his fellow workers that a train is coming when they’re doing construction. “We didn’t want to be too loud,” he said. “The excitment, of being part of something, that’s the nice part about all of this.”

Dave Price folded up his 8-pound ladder this morning and boarded a train and then a subway from his home in Stamford, Conn. He said he wanted his 16-year-old daughter, Lauren Price, to have a good view.

“We’ll be able to take good pictures,” said Price, 49 years old.

He got the idea from watching Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans. He said commuters during the morning rush hour couldn’t help commenting. “You’re prepared, you must have done this before,” they marveled.

Lauren Price, standing with several friends, was just excited to see all if her favorite players, including Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks. ”We would watch all of the games at my dad’s house,” she said. “We really didn’t think we were going to be here.”

The Downtown Alliance, which quietly planned the parade in the weeks before the Super Bowl and will soon shift into full clean-up mode, just sent out this request via Twitter: “Everyone should scoop up a handful of confetti and take home as a memento! (Saves us some work!)”

Season ticket-holders Rich Lindsay, 66 years old, and his son Bobby, 31, came from New Jersey wearing Giants sweatshirts and caps.

“I’m just amazed I’m standing here based on how they played this season,” Bobby said. “To see a team that lost to Washington and Seattle twice, to think about how close they were too the season being over — its magical being here.”

Rich said in the games after the giants played the Jets every win was due to one or two plays at the tail end of the game, and sometimes to sheer luck.

“Its like the 1969 Mets when they won the world series,” he said. “The theme was ‘you just gotta believe.” The theme for the Giants this season was “You just gotta finish. They finished every game, and that’s what got them here. That was Coughlins word”

What has amazed me most so far from my vantage point on press truck 10 is just how close the fans are. I can read every sign and T-shirt. I can hear conversations as they wonder who the unathletic people on this truck are. And I’m covered in confetti.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated that Tuesday’s festivities will generate somewhere between $19 million and $38 million in economic activity. But his administration didn’t respond to repeated questions about how much the parade will cost.

On Monday, City Hall said the costs of the parade would be “offset” by official sponsors including Duane Reade, Hackensack University Medical Center, Hospital for Special Surgery and MasterCard. But when The Wall Street Journal asked a mayoral spokeswoman whether the taxpayers would end up picking up any part of the parade tab, she said she didn’t know.

In 2001, when the Giants lost to the Baltimore Ravens, the administration of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani estimated that the loss saved the city from spending $1 million for a parade up the Canyon of Heroes.

Between the NYPD security and the Sanitation Department clean-up, the parade requires a huge effort from city worker. Four years ago, hundreds of NYPD officers, some from special units such as transit and housing, scored overtime pay when they were deployed to cover the parade.

But for at least few hours Tuesday, the mayor doesn’t plan to entertain questions about cost. The focus is simple: celebration.

“Big Blue gave us a game to remember and on Tuesday we’re going to give them a parade to remember,” the mayor vowed in a statement just moments after Sunday’s game ended.

There are a lot of Giants jerseys out here today, with countless people wearing Manning, Cruz, and Tuck. Some of the older fans have gone with Simms and Taylor too.

But only one person, so far, appears to have had the audacity to bring an Eagles jersey to a Giants parade. Instead of a name on the back, the Eagles attire had the word SUPER BOWLS. And the big number was 0.

After the last float rounded the corner onto Broadway, police began to take down barricades. Scores of people streamed out and Sanitation crews began their work. Using leaf blowers, workers blew confetti into the middle of the street and raked up scattered toilet paper.

“And now the clean up begins,” said one worker, who declined to give his name.

As revelers filed onto the paper lined streets, one man grabbed two handfuls and threw it over his head, rejoicing in the celebration.

Comptroller John Liu, his voice a bit hoarse from yelling, arrived here after riding up Broadway. ”It was beyond exhilarating,” he said. “A million people out there along the Canyon of Heroes — the enthusiasm for the Giants, the spirit from New York, it’s truly unparalleled.”

City Hall Plaza, like virtually everywhere else around the parade route, is littered with paper. Hip-hop music on the speakers has prompted some grinning cops to bob up and down with the beat.

This parade route is proving much longer than in previous years. The Yankees’ 2009 parade ended at Chambers, but we just went up to Worth and turned right past the biggest crowd along the route in Foley Square, where people are hanging in trees.

In other news, the white paper isn’t all confetti. Foley Square is strewn with blank tax documents (W-9s, in case you were wondering) and toilet paper at the moment.

People lucky enough to be among the few allowed into City Hall Plaza just watched a brief performance from the cast of the “Rock of Ages” musical. Still waiting for the team and other dignitaries to take the stage.

For those outside City Hall Plaza, the celebration is officially over but the warm buzz of victory continues.

“It was the best,” said Ramon Cedeno, 27, from Bedford-Stuyvesant. “Nothing feels better than this! Words can’t explain how I feel right now. I took vacation for this.”

Cedeno, with his face painted blue, left the barriers with his friends andwalked down Broadway in the path of the parade as people hurled shredded paper and toilet rolls. The street scene looked as if a blizzard had dumped all over the street.

Richie O’Keefe, 54, from Mahopac, N.Y., sat on a stool in the middle of the street, stuck a toilet roll on his finger and spun it around. “Anybody got any Charmin?” he shouted.

His friends, joined by a MTA worker in an orange vest, danced around him with toilet paper, wrapping him like a mummy and dumping shredded paper over his head until police broke up the strange scene.

“I’m feeling great,” O’Keefe said on the sidewalk later, still wrapped in toilet paper. “What’s not to feel good? Great weather, great place to watch the parade, and a Super Bowl win.

“The best part of the parade” he added, “was seeing the super bowl trophy. It was beautiful.”

Hundreds in the crowd are now doing the salsa. “Move your hips a little bit. Feel the Latino inside you,” the director of Ballet Hispanico encouraged the crowd.

On stage, 10 professional dancers are giving a salsa demonstration. It seems a little more elaborate than anything Victor Cruz would ever have time for in the end zone — and the wide receiver probably couldn’t pull off some of these moves in full pads.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan are starting the speech-making part of the City Hall ceremony.

Among the sentimental highlights are the mayor’s declaring the city the “Big Blue Apple” and Strahan’s stressing the importance of heart in the face of all the so-called experts and doubters: “You cannot doubt the heart of a G-man.”

Bloomberg’s also asked the crowd what the first three letters of “elite” spell. (That would be Eli, as in Manning, which prompted the mayor to start an MVP chant.)

Bob Papa, the Giants broadcast announcer, calls up a trio of elected officials — City Comptroller John Liu, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — before introducing the Giants coaches and staff.

Mayor Bloomberg just presented the team and staff with keys to the city in a ceremony that felt a lot like a graduation. The staff went first to little reaction from the crowd, but once the players began collecting their awards, the applause picked up.

The loudest cheers were for Victor Cruz, Eli Manning, Ahmad Bradshaw, Mario Manningham and Chase Blackburn, who had a Super Bowl interception.

A few other players made sure they were noticed, too. Punter Steve Weatherford gave a head-high Kung fu kick, Laurence Tynes wore a soccer jersey with his own name on the back, and Brandon Jacobs tried his own version of the salsa before giving up.

Eli Manning took the stage and, loyal student that he is, immediately quoted the sayings of his teacher, Coach Tom Coughlin. “Make it tough,” Coughlin had lectured all year. “And make it possible.”

“So when we started the season 6-2, we said, ‘Coach, this is not tough enough. We’re going lose four in a row,’” Manning said, flashing his sense of humor.

Manning added that they stuck to the philosophy, intentionally or not, all season, as they won three of their last four games to make the playoffs and won four more in the playoffs by sticking to another of Coughlin’s mantras, “Finish.”

“Finish games, finish the fourth quarter, and finish the season strong,” Manning said. “That’s exactly what we did. The team that had eight fourth-quarter comebacks could finish games, including the Super Bowl.”